This invention relates to the art of refractometers, and more particularly to a new and improved automatic refractometer for measuring refractive index of liquids and determining percent solids therefrom.
Refractometers often are of the type based on measurement of the so-called critical angle of total reflection, in which the position of a boundary or shadow line dividing a field of view into a bright and a dark portion is observed through an eyepiece against a fixed scale or mask. It would be highly desirable to provide an automatic refractometer capable of completely automatic measurements of refractive indexes to eliminate the possibility of human error arising from manual alignment through an eyepiece. It also would be highly desirable to provide such an automatic refractometer utilizing the advantages of digital data processing and capable of calculating percent solids from the index measurements, providing temperature corrections when needed in the refractive index and percent solids determinations, having a plurality of modes of operation, and having multi channel capability for handling a variety of information to provide different interpretations of the index of refraction.